Rainbow Chamber Players Concert on Saturday

from the Facebook Events Web page for this concert

The Rainbow Chamber Players consists of members of the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony (BARS), which presents occasional concerts of chamber offerings to supplement the repertoire of the annual BARS season. Their next concert will be this coming Saturday, and it has been organized around two occasions, gay marriage and women’s suffrage. The conductor will be Kyle Baldwin, and the program will include one United States premiere and one West Coast public premiere.

The West Coast public premiere will be of the song “Man and Man.” Jimmy Lopez composed this for his wedding to his husband Heleno Leitao. The music was first performed at their private wedding ceremony held in Grace Cathedral. The vocal part was sung by countertenor Anthony Ross Costanzo. The countertenor for the Rainbow Chamber Players performance will be Jean-Paul Jones.

The United States premiere will be of a chamber version of the overture that Ethel Smythe composed for her one-act comic opera “The Boatswain’s Mate.” This overture incorporates the theme of a previously-composed anthem for the British Suffrage Movement, “The March of the Women.” Smythe composed several arrangements of this song, including one for unison choir and optional orchestra. The performance of the overture will be preceded by Jones singing “The March of the Women” with members of the Rainbow Chamber Players.

Smythe studied music in Leipzig, Germany. She met Johannes Brahms on several occasions and much admired his music. As a result, her place on the program will be reinforced with an opening performance of Brahms’ Opus 11 (first) serenade in D major, which he completed in 1858. Brahms subsequently worked on two versions for reduced resources, the first a nonet for wind and strings and the second for chamber orchestra. Both of these versions have been lost. However, the premiere performance was given by a chamber orchestra. The final work on the program will conclude will be the chamber version of the “Acrostic Song,” the aria that concludes from David Del Tredici’s “Final Alice.” Jones will again sing the vocal part.

This performance will begin at 6:30 p.m. this coming Saturday, May 18. The venue will be St. Matthews Lutheran Church, located at 3281 16th Street, a short walk from the 16th Street stop on the J Church Muni line. The concert will be free, but donations will be accepted for BARS.